If you tell me that trees are big, and trees are made of hard wood, I as a human am capable of asking whether trees feel pain. I don't think what you said is false and I am not familiar with computational theory to be able to debate it. People occasionally have novel creative insights that do not derive from past experience or knowledge, and that is what I think of when I think of creativity.

Humans created novel concepts like writing literally out of thin air. I like how the book "Guns, Steels, and Germs" describes that novel creative process and contrasts it via a disseminative derivation process.

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vidarh 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> People occasionally have novel creative insights that do not derive from past experience or knowledge, and that is what I think of when I think of creativity.

If they are not derived from past experience or knowledge, then unless humans exceed the Turing computable, they would need to be the result of randomness in one form or other. There's absolutely no reason why an LLM can not do that. The only reason a far "dumber" pure random number generator based string generator "can't" do that is because it would take too long to chance on something coherent, but it most certainly would keep spitting out novel things. The only difference is how coherent the novel things are.

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Jensson a day ago | parent [-]

> If they are not derived from past experience or knowledge

Every animal is born with intuition, you missed that part.

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vidarh a day ago | parent [-]

So knowledge encoded in the physical structure of the brain.

You're missing the part where unless there is unknown physics going on in the brain that breaks maths as me know it, there is no mechanism for a brain to exceed the Turing computable, in which case any Turing complete system is comptationally equivalent to it.

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a day ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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arowthway a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Turing machines are deterministic, brain might not be because of quantum mechanics happening. Of course there is no proof that this is related to creativity.

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vidarh a day ago | parent [-]

Turing machines are deterministic if all their inputs are deterministic, which they do not need to be, and if we allow them to be. Indeed, by default, LLMs are by default not deterministic because we intentionally inject randomness.

	▲	arowthway a day ago \| parent [-]
		It doesn't mean we can accurately simulate the brain by swapping its source of nondeterminism with any other PRNG or TRNG. It might just so happen that to simulate ingenuity you have to simulate the universe first.

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johnisgood a day ago | parent | prev [-]

This Turing completeness equivalence is misleading. While all Turing-complete systems can theoretically compute the same class of functions, this says nothing about computational complexity, physical constraints, practical achievability in finite time, or the actual algorithms required. A Turing machine that can theoretically simulate a brain does not mean we know how to do it or that it is even feasible. This is like arguing that because weather systems and computers both follow physical laws, you should be able to perfectly simulate weather on your laptop.

Additionally, "No mechanism to exceed Turing computable" is a non-sequitur. Even granting that brains do not perform hypercomputation, this does not support your conclusion that artificial systems are "computationally equivalent" to brains in any practical sense. We would need: (1) complete understanding of brain algorithms, (2) the actual data/weights encoded in neural structures, (3) sufficient computational resources, and (4) correct implementation. None of these follow from Turing completeness alone, I believe.

More importantly, you completely dodged the actual point about intuition. Jensson's point is about evolutionary encoding vs. learned knowledge. Intuition represents millions of years of evolved optimization encoded in brain structure and chemistry. You acknowledge this ("knowledge encoded in physical structure") but then pivot to an irrelevant theoretical CS argument rather than addressing whether we can actually replicate such evolutionary knowledge in artificial systems.

Your original claim was "If they are not derived from past experience or knowledge" which creates a false dichotomy. Animals are born with innate knowledge encoded through evolutionary optimization. This is not learned from individual experience, yet it is still knowledge, specifically, it is millions of years of selection pressure encoded in neural architecture, reflexes, instincts, and cognitive biases.

So, for example: a newborn animal has never experienced a predator but knows to freeze or flee from certain stimuli. It has built-in heuristics for threat assessment, social behavior, spatial reasoning, and countless other domains that cost generations to develop through survival pressure.

Current AI systems lack this evolutionary substrate. They are trained on human data over weeks or months, not evolved over millions of years. We do not even know how to encode this type of knowledge artificially or even fully understand what knowledge is encoded in biological systems. Turing completeness does not bridge this gap any more than it bridges the gap between a Turing machine and actual weather.

Correct me if I'm misinterpreting your argument.

	▲	alansammarone 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I...I am very interested in this subject. There's a lot to unpack in your comment, but I think it's really pretty simple. > this does not support your conclusion that artificial systems are "computationally equivalent" to brains in any practical sense. You're making a point about engineering or practicality, and in that sense, you are absolutely correct. That's not the most interesting part of the question, however. > This is like arguing that because weather systems and computers both follow physical laws, you should be able to perfectly simulate weather on your laptop. Yes, that's exactly what I'd argue, and...hm.. yes, I think that's clearly true. Whether it takes 10 minutes or 10^100 minutes, 1~ or 10^100 human lifetimes to do so, it's irrelevant. Units (including human lifetimes) are arbitrary, and I think fundamental truths probably won't depend on such arbitrary things as how long a particular collection of atoms in a particular corner of the universe (i.e. humans) happens to be stable for. Ratios are closer to being fundamental, but I digress. To put it a different way - we think we know what the speed of light is. Traveling at v = 0.1c or at v = (1 - 10^(-100))c are equivalent in a fundamental sense, it's an engineering problem. Now, traveling at v = c...that's very different. That's interesting.

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c22 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Wouldn't this insight derive from many past experiences of feeling pain yourself and the knowledge that others feel it too?